Amelia Earhart Mystery Solved? 'Investigation Junkies' to Launch New Expedition

Amelia Earhart Mystery Solved? 'Investigation Junkies' to Launch New Expedition

DNA Evidence on a Remote Island May Reveal the Truth About Earhart's Disappearance

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By CHRISTINA CARON
July 27, 2009

It has been 72 years since famed aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared while attempting to fly around the world. But the mystery remains unsolved: Nobody knows exactly what happened to Earhart or her plane.

Now researchers at the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or Tighar, say they are on the verge of recovering DNA evidence that would demonstrate Earhart had been stranded on Nikumaroro Island (formerly known as Gardner Island) before finally perishing there.

During May and June of next year, Tighar will launch a new $500,000 expedition, continuing the archaeological work it has been doing on the island since 2001.

"We think we will be able to come back with DNA," said Tighar's Executive Director Ric Gillespie, who is working with two DNA labs in Ontario, Canada, Genesis Genomics and Molecular World. "We were out there in 2007 under the impression that in order to extract DNA we would need to find a piece of a human, and we didn't find anything like that. But we did find what's best described as personal effects of the castaway that died there."

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/sto...ahoo_pitchlist

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it would be awesome if they could finally prove what happened to her.

Dang, I wonder why are they waiting until next year to do the expedition?

Me too Elle! I have always been so curious about what happened to Amelia! It will be interesting to finally find out.

Not even gonna lie, I'm officially envious of anyone on that expedition. I wanna go danngit! That's one of my absolute favorite mysteries. Tied with D.B. Cooper, of course.

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Originally Posted by ElleGee

Dang, I wonder why are they waiting until next year to do the expedition?

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Maybe they have to clear funding and permits?

See Also : http://www.bigbigforums.com/news-inf...ing-place.html

Amelia Earhart's plane found? Sonar images may have pinpointed wreckage
By Rossella Lorenzi - Published May 29, 2013 - Discovery News

http://global.fncstatic.com/static/m...%20anomaly.jpg

PHOTOS: Clues Pointing to Amelia Earhart's Plane http://news.discovery.com/history/us...tos-130529.htm

A grainy sonar image captured off an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati might represent the remains of the Electra, the two-engine aircraft legendary aviator Amelia Earhart was piloting when she vanished on July 2, 1937 in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator.

Released by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating Earhart's last, fateful flight, the images show an "anomaly" resting at the depth of about 600 feet in the waters off Nikumaroro island, some 350 miles southeast of Earhart's target destination, Howland Island.

According to TIGHAR researchers, the sonar image shows a strong return from a narrow object roughly 22 feet long oriented southwest/northeast on the slope near the base of an underwater cliff. Shadows indicate that the object is higher on the southwest (downhill side). A lesser return extends northeastward for about 131 feet.

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'[It's] very promising, definitely not a rock, and it's in the correct location on the reef.'

- Wolfgang Burnside, who conducted the underwater search

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"What initially got our attention is that there is no other sonar return like it in the entire body of data collected," Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News. "It is truly an anomaly, and when you're looking for man-made objects against a natural background, anomalies are good," he added.

A number of artifacts recovered by TIGHAR during 10 expeditions have suggested that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made a forced landing on the island's smooth, flat coral reef. Gillespie and his team believe the two became castaways and eventually died there.

In July 2012, Gillespie and his crew returned to Nikumaroro to carry out an underwater search for the plane with a torpedo-shaped Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) and a Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV). Multi-beam sonar mounted on the ship mapped the underwater terrain and the AUV collected a volume of side-scan data along roughly 1.3 nautical miles of shoreline off the west end of Nikumaroro, while the ROV, capable of reaching depths of 3,000 feet, produced hours upon hours of high-definition video.

Plagued by a number of technical issues and a difficult environment, the hunt did not result in the immediate identification of pieces from Earhart's Lockheed Electra aircraft. As they returned from the data collection trip, TIGHAR researchers began reviewing and analyzing all of new material recovered from the underwater search. They identified a small debris field of objects at the depth of 200 feet, which TIGHAR forensic imaging specialist Jeff Glickman described as consisting of man-made objects.

Located distinctly apart from the debris field of the SS Norwich City, a British steamer which went aground on the island's reef in 1929, the site features objects which appear consistent with the interpretation made by Glickmann of a grainy photograph of Nikumaroro's western shoreline.

The grainy photo was shot by British Colonial Service officer Eric R. Bevington in October 1937, just three months after Amelia's disappearance on July 2, 1937. It revealed an apparent man-made protruding object on the left side of the frame. Forensic imaging analyses of the picture found the mysterious object consistent with the shape and dimensions of the wreckage of landing gear from Earhart's plane. "The Bevington photo shows what appears to be four components of the plane: a strut, a wheel, a worm gear and a fender. In the debris field there appears to be the fender, possibly the wheel and possibly some portions of the strut," Glickman told Discovery News.

A new twist in the search occurred last March when Richard Conroy, a member of TIGHAR’s on-line Amelia Earhart Search Forum, spotted an anomaly in a sonar map posted online. "The anomaly gives the impression of being an object that struck the slope at the base of the second cliff at a depth of 613 feet, then skidded in a southerly direction for about 131 feet before coming to rest," Gillespie said.

In its underwater search, TIGHAR missed the place where the anomaly appears by only a few hundred feet. "If only we had continued just that little bit further," Wolfgang Burnside, president of Submersible Systems Inc and the inventor and pilot of ROV used to conduct the underwater search, said.

He found the target "very promising, definitely not a rock, and it's in the correct location on the reef."

"It also shows what I interpret as 'drag' markings on the reef above and to the north behind the target, as it obviously hasn't quite settled into its final resting place yet," Burnside said.

Gillespie offers another explanation. “The apparent ground scar behind the object may also be a trail of internal components that spilled from the ripped-open fuselage.“

The anomaly appears to be the right size and shape to match the Electra wreckage and lines up nicely with the Bevington Object and Jeff Glickman's debris field.

According to Gillespie, the evidence found so far suggests a reasonable sequence of events:

• Earhart makes a safe landing on the dry reef and sends radio distress calls for at least five days.

• Before the seventh day when Navy search planes arrive, rising tides and surf knock the Electra off its landing gear and push it over the reef edge into the ocean, leaving a landing gear assembly (the Bevington Object) behind, jammed in the reef. Earhart and Noonan become castaways on the uninhabited, waterless atoll.

• The landing gear assembly stays jammed in the reef at least until October when Bevington took the photo, but at some point it breaks free and sinks, ending up in the catchment area at 200 feet where Glickman spotted pieces of it in the video.

• After going over the edge, the airplane is battered by the surf and sinks within a few minutes in the shallow water just past the reef edge. Subsequent storms cause pieces of wreckage to wash ashore where they are found and used by the island's later residents.

• Eventually the fuselage goes over the cliff, hits the slope at the bottom of the cliff at 600 feet and skids for a ways before coming rest more or less on its side with the starboard-side wing stub sticking up

The only way to be absolutely sure that the anomaly is indeed Amelia's plane is by sending another expedition to the island, but that will depend upon the ability of TIGHAR, a nonprofit institute that relies upon sponsorships and contributions from the public, to raise the needed funding. "We currently project that it will take nearly $3,000,000 to put together an expedition that can do what needs to be done. It's a lot of money, but it's a small price to pay for finding Amelia," Gillespie said.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/...#ixzz2UjmbIsKL

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Timeline
July 22, 2012: Underwater search for Earhart plane called off.
June 1, 2012: Dozens of previously dismissed radio signals may have been transmissions from Earhart, study says.
May 31, 2012: A small cosmetic jar offers more circumstantial evidence that Earhart died on uninhabited island.
Mar 20, 2012: Enhanced analysis of photo taken months after Earhart's plane vanished leads salvagers back to the island.
Dec. 17, 2010: Bone fragments and artifacts turn up on a deserted South Pacific island.

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Lawsuit: Amelia Earhart's plane found in 2010, discovery concealed
The group searching for Amelia Earhart's plane is being sued by a donor, who says the plane was found three years ago but the discovery concealed so more money could be raised.
Published: June 12, 2013 at 5:50 PMBy GABRIELLE LEVY, UPI.com


The group conducting a search for Amelia Earhart's plane strongly denied charges they had found the aircraft in 2010 and hid it from donors.

Timothy Mellon, the son of philanthropist Paul Mellon and a major contributor to The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery sued the group on June 3, alleging TIGHAR found the famed airplane in a 2010 expedition, then hid the news so it could keep fundraising.

Mellon donated $1 million that helped fund the 2012 expedition that may have indeed turned up the long-awaited evidence of Earhart's plane.

Ric Gillespie, the executive director of TIGHAR, called the lawsuit frivolous.

"When you've got this kind of money, you can put together these kinds of lawsuits," Gillespie said. "But our group has been totally open with any discovery."

Mellon's suit claims the images collected in the 2010 expedition show not only the missing Electra wreckage, but the dismembered remains of both Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan, Earhart's banjo and guitar, flyswatter and rolls of toilet paper.

The TIGHAR website says the group investigated Mellon's claims and forensic experts said the footage did not contain evidence of Earhart's disappearance.

"Despite the lawsuit, TIGHAR will always be grateful to Mr. Mellon for his contribution to the 2012 expedition and respects his right to interpret the imagery any way he choses," the group wrote on its website. "TIGHAR also maintains that the allegations in the lawsuit are entirely without merit and TIGHAR will defend itself fully."

When the group announced the possible discovery of Earhart's plane last month, they noted the object spotted in images from the 2012 expedition was in a location not previously searched.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Blog/201...#ixzz2W2nUNzCN

Researchers Say They've Found A Piece Of Amelia Earhart's Lost Plane
Business Insider - Matthew DeBord - 5 hrs ago

Aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart and her plane were lost over the Pacific in 1937.

Neither were ever found.

But now researchers argue that a chunk of metal discovered in 1991 belongs to Earhart's vanished Lockheed Electra.

Discovery News reports:
According to researchers at The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating the last, fateful flight taken by Earhart 77 years ago, the aluminum sheet is a patch of metal installed on the Electra during the aviator’s eight-day stay in Miami, which was the fourth stop on her attempt to circumnavigate the globe.
Discovery News notes that TIGHAR has been looking into the Earhart mystery for many years.

The piece was found on Nikumaroro, which Discovery News describes as "an uninhabited atoll in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati."

Here it is — really the middle of the vast empty ocean that is this part of the Pacific:

http://img.s-msn.com/tenant/amp/enti...6&q=60&o=f&l=f

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/res...inessinsider11


Metal patch may point to Earhart's plane
Michael Winter, USA TODAY 7:20 p.m. EDT October 29, 2014

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/83b4...ia-Earhart.jpg

Amelia Earhart
(Photo: Purdue University Libraries)

Researchers say they are increasingly confident that a piece of aluminum found on a remote Pacific atoll more than 20 years ago probably came from the airplane flown by Amelia Earhart on her ill-fated attempt to circle the world in 1937.

The metal sheet, found in 1991 with other possible Earhart artifacts on Nikumaroro, in Kiribati, appears to be the patch that replaced a navigational window on her Lockheed Electra during an eight-day layover in Miami, her fourth stop, the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery announced.

The finding bolsters the group's speculation that an "anomaly" detected by sonar 600 feet deep off the coral atoll's west end in 2012 may be the remains of the fuselage.

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/cad6...hart-patch.jpg

Researchers say this aluminum patch, discovered in 1991 on a Pacific atoll, probably came from Amelia Earhart's ill-fated aircraft.(Photo: The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery)

Another expedition in planned for June to examine the steep, underwater mountainside and search the island for evidence of the campsite that Earhart and Noonan built as castaways. Their remains have never been found.

The working hypothesis is that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, landed safely July 2 on what was then called Gardner island. Radio evidence indicates they sent distress calls for at least five nights before tides and surf washed the twin-propeller plane off the reef.

The researchers say the shiny metal patch, which replaced the custom-made window, is visible in a June 1, 1937, newspaper photo of Earhart's plane leaving Miami for Puerto Rico. "The patch was as unique to her particular aircraft as a fingerprint is to an individual," the group says.

An examination of the Pacific artifact by vintage-aircraft restorers determined that the rivet pattern and dimensions "matches that fingerprint in many respects."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/w...ment/18136859/